Liquid Biopsy: Advances, Limitations and Clinical Applications - Abstract
As an important part of precision medicine, liquid biopsy attracts more and more attention of scholars and clinicians. It refers to the real-time monitoring of the dynamic alterations of tumor by detecting circulating tumor cells (CTCs), circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) and exosomes in patients’ plasma or serum. Thus, liquid biopsy has irreplaceable advantages in tumor early diagnosis, progression monitoring, curative effects evaluation, prognosis judgement and so on as a non-invasive method. Here we reviewed traditional clinical diagnostic technologies and the liquid biopsy and summarized the advantages, limitations and test indexes of CTCs, ctDNAs and exosomes for their clinical applications. We also enumerated other applications of liquid biopsy by using other body fluids to monitor some particular cancers. At last, we forecasted the opportunities and existed challenges of liquid biopsy.